Understanding
by ReikoMizutani
Summary: Tally and Shay come to an understanding about what happened in the Smoke, as well as what happened with the cure.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: After rereading _Pretties_ as well as the Uglies mangas recently, I remembered something that had always annoyed me. Why on Earth did Tally never explain to Shay that her sending the specials to the Smoke was an accident? Clearly she didn't know that destroying the tracker would set it off, so why didn't she ever tell Shay that? Like, yeah maybe Shay would have still been mad about the whole David thing, but at least she'd know that Tally really did care about the Smoke in the end! Also, in the manga, Shay clearly sees the Special Circumstances hovercar heading towards Tally and Zane at the tower. Why would she think they'd be able to smuggle the cure to her? They would have had to either throw it away or swallow the pills to get rid of the evidence. This one shot is them coming to an understanding.**

* * *

Tally sat on a park bench, fiddling around with the scarves tied around her interface cuff. She'd been ignoring Zane's pings for the past few days, as well as the pings from her fellow Crims, and other pretties trying to join the Crims. Cliques and boyfriends didn't seem to matter much anymore. Nothing did. Worrying about Zane's headaches, desperately trying to get Shay to talk to her, and trying to fix all of her mistakes clouded her mind. At this point, she was beginning to think she hadn't even taken the cure. When Zane wasn't fighting his headaches, he had absolute clarity while she was still fighting the fog.

Finally, when she'd decided to go back to her room for some private sulking, she heard footsteps approaching her.

"Hi Zane." Tally said, her voice as tired-sounding as she felt.

"Wrong Crim."Came Shay's voice.

"Shay-la?!" Tally jumped up and turned around, hardly believing her eyes. Sure enough, there was Shay in a midnight blue dress, her face grim and looking as if it were set in stone.

"Shay, I-"

"Look, Tally. I'm willing to listen to the whole story. I—something happened last night that made me start rethinking things. Can I sit down?"

"Of course!" Tally pulled her over to the bench and sat down herself, returning to her scarf-fiddling. "So—what exactly happened last night?"

"Dr. Cable happened." Shay leaned forward heavily, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

"Oh, you saw her too."

 _"What?"_

Their eyes met briefly, and they both looked down. "Dr. Cable tried to offer me a job as a Special. She said she'd let Zane join as well. I said no, of course."

Shay made a noncommittal noise, bringing her thumb up to her mouth, then stopping short. Tally briefly remembered Shay's nail-biting from the Ugly days. "Okay, start from the beginning."

"Well, after I brought Zane back to Garbo—"

Shay scoffed and rolled her eyes. "No, I mean before that. Before we became Pretty, before you helped destroy the Smoke. Start from when I left."

Tally flinched, then began searching her mind for those painful memories. "The day I was supposed to have the surgery, I was taken to Special Circumstances. That's where I met Dr. Cable, and she demanded I tell her everything about David and the Smoke. Of course, I barely knew anything, but I told her I promised I wouldn't tell anything. Then she told me that if I didn't help them find the Smoke, I'd be ugly forever."

"No wonder you betrayed us. You were so obsessed with becoming pretty." Shay sat her chin in her hand and glared.

"Shay, please. You said you'd listen."

"Fine. Continue."

Tally sighed, thoroughly annoyed. "I didn't want that, not at first, so after a few days, I caved in and told her what I knew, which like I said, wasn't much. She made me do an eye scan on that stupid locket, gave me a bunch of stuff and sent me on my way. Yes, I did have city help like everyone thought, and yes, I did originally plan to help the Specials destroy the Smoke, but after a while, I began to see what _you_ saw."

"And what was _that_?" Shay asked grimly.

"How beautiful nature is." Tally looked at the park. "This manufactured city has nothing on the real world, on the Smoke."

"You still helped destroy it."

Tally sighed. "I didn't mean to, Shay! I swear I didn't!"

"Then why aren't we still there, Tally?! Why are David and Maddy still on the run?"

"Because I _messed up!_ " Tears began to well up in Tally's eyes. "I messed up, Shay."

"Understatement of the century." Shay scoffed.

"Shay, please listen!"

"I am listening."

Tally wiped her eyes, took a deep breath and began again. "The night I met David's parents, they told me about the operation and how it changed our brains, then when David and I— _you know_ , I threw the locket into a fire. I thought that if I destroyed it, they wouldn't be able to track me anymore. That one day, you could forgive David and I."

"Oh." Shay's voice came quietly. "You destroyed the locket, and it—"

"Sent a signal to the Specials. It was a horrible, horrible accident. If I had known, Shay I—"

"Now I understand."

"Understand what?"

Shay looked at Tally, regret filling her eyes. "Dr. Cable said something about—about you being perfect to help the Specials find the Smoke because you're easy to manipulate"

Tally laughed mirthlessly. "She _would_ say that." Tally met Shay's eyes once more. "But I'm not the same stupid ugly who only cared about turning sixteen and being pretty, and I know I'm selfish and shallow and-"

"I was wrong Tally."

"Huh?"

"All those things I said about you. That was true about you _before_ the Smoke. I—I thought about it, about when you and Zane climbed the tower. Of course you didn't have time to sneak the cure back, you climbed the _transmission tower_ after all! I feel like such a bubblehead for assuming that you could have brought it back, especially considering that Special Circumstances dragged you two away."

"So, you forgive me?"

Shay smiled. "Yeah, I do."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes before Shay spoke again. "So, is it all that it's cracked up to be?"

Tally gave her a questioning look, then realized what Shay was talking about. "I don't really know anymore. At first, it seemed to work, but after a few days I was fighting the haze again, and a little later Zane started getting those headaches. I'm scared that we did something wrong. I know that there were two pills, but the note you'd helped me write was addressed to me. It didn't say I wasn't allowed to share it, but it didn't say I should either."

"Do you think-?"

"I don't know."

Tally and Shay stared at each other for a while, then Shay spoke. "Meet me at Cleopatra Park."

"What time?"

"Midnight."

Shay practically leaped off the bench and rushed off on her hoverboard. Tally sat there, wondering what to do.


	2. Understanding CH 2?

_**Hello, ReikoMizutani here.**_

 _ **I had originally intended this work to be a oneshot, but I had an idea of an AU where Tally and Shay get captured by the Specials together, but instead of becoming Cutters (in the sense of Shay not cutting as her 'cure'. I'd intended for 'Understanding' to take place right before Shay began to cut) they become a different kind of 'special' Specials. Same mods, different form of being Icy.**_

 _ **This continuation should be coming soon!**_


End file.
